I understand that live radio shows are broadcast in delay (7 seconds?). When somebody says a naughty word which shouldn’t be broadcast, it is “dumped” so it doesn’t go out over the airwaves.
However, when such a ‘dump’ takes place, there is no gap in what is heard by the listeners, its as if the naughty words and whatever time they took up simply vanish.
In other words, if some cretin says “blah blah blah underpants blah blah blah”, what we hear is “blah blah blah blah blah blah” instead of “blah blah blah (silent pause for removal of offensive language) blah blah blah”.
What I don’t understand is, if the ‘dump’ simply removes the words and the time it took to say them, doesn’t that somehow alter the delay time? In other words if the delay is 7 seconds and I say 2 seconds worth of naughty words, which are dumped, and that 2 seconds is simply removed from the broadcast, isn’t the delay now down to 5 seconds because all of the words after the naughtiness are moved ahead 2 seconds?
And question #2: How does the whole dump thing work? I mean, I know they simply hit a button or something, but is someone listening in both real time and delay so that if something offensive is said they know that “in 7 seconds something bad will be said so I better get my finger on the button and be ready when its about to be broadcast”?
The answer to your first question is yes, it shortens the delay time, but this gets adjusted for again once they go to break. The answer to your second question is yes.
It’s more like you just press the button as soon as you hear the offensive bit. That dumps the whole delay buffer and the seven seconds that includes the profanity is gone forever. And you’re back live.
We had two side by side open reel tape decks. They were wound together; i.e., the supply reel was on the left side of the left deck, the tape rolled over the recording head if the left deck and through its pinch roller, then straight over to the playback head of the rightmost machine, and the takeup reel was on the right spindle of the right machine.
So the live conversation would record onto the tape through the left machine’s record head, and be sent to the transmitter from the playback head of the right machine.
The DJ or technician would hear the swear word, then switch their headphone to monitor the output of the right machine, which was replaying the conversation of a few seconds ago, and bleep out the naughty bit, or simply swith off the output so there’d be a brief moment of dead air.
This system did not have your fancy-dan methods if sneaking time in and out of the recording. We had to listen to a bleep or nothing for the entire time that the actual swearing took place, AND WE LIKED IT!
We’re talking high-tech equipment here. Like someone said–there’s a 7 second buffer, so when something naughty is said, the DJ (or more likely, his producer) hits the “dump” button and BOOM…all of the sudden we’re back in real time.
Here’s where the technology comes into play. They’ve got to get back to the 7-second buffer, if they want to continue having callers on the air, etc. So their equipment builds the 7-sec buffer back up, without it really being detectable to the listener. I’m not quite up on the nitty-gritty details, but it probably stretches pauses out & stuff like that. It probably works much like the audio equipment that’s used to speed up 60 minute shows into 58 minutes, so stations can sell more commercial time. It works in a manner that’s barely noticable by the casual listener.
So it would go something like this:
Caller “And then I called him a dump. How 'bout that?”
DJ: “Uh…you can’t say that on the air. Goodbye Caller” click
DJ: " Well, we’ll take some more calls in a minute…but first we have to build our delay back up" DJ & Sidekick chit-chat for a minute or so…then they go back to the phone lines
Remember the ‘Opie and Anthony’ show on WNEW (the ones who got canned last year because they sponsored a contest which led to that couple getting caught messing around in a church)?
Probably they were just fooling with us, but they claimed they had 2 delay buttons in series (perhaps it was three toward the end) which meant a personwas monitoring the person who was monitoring the show (or, if three, add another person who was monitoring the person…).
It may have been a crock or an inside joke, but considering some of the stunts they pulled…
Strangely, when I called up Pete and Geoff this morning (Virgin Radio, to win a holiday, they didn’t pick the line I was on ) I could hear them on the radio and through the phone at the same time (while on hold).
I got the impression that it was all happening in real-time.
I remember reading, no cite, a year or so ago about a new device that most radio stations were drooling over because it meant more ad time could be sold thereby fattening their coffers.
This cashbox does what the seven second delay would do except it shortens the pauses and gaps in speech which are all precious seconds that can be sold to your local auto dealer so they can do more irritating commercials.
Last I heard only ABC affiliates have adopted this technology.
Very possible. I don’t think the “7-second delay” is a gov’t regulation, or anything. It’s up to each station, and some may be more willing to deal with the risk. But pehaps the feed for this station’s “hold music” was also on the same 7-second delay…?
BTW, this delay is the main reason that DJ beg callers to “turn down your radio” when calling in. Many times callers will leave their radios up when talking to the DJ. They’ll be listening to the DJ on their radio speaker, not realizing that they’re hearing what was said 7-seconds ago. This can really confuse some people, leading to some pretty messed-up conversations.
raisinbread– I alluded to this device in my previous post. I think it’s been around for several years. For a while, some stations were using it to condense The Rush Limbaugh program to squeeze more commercial time out of it. When Rush found out about it, he demanded that no station airing his show be allowed to use it. No doubt many other stations are using this device on other syndicated programs.
Well, I worked in radio as an engineer up until about two years ago, and here’s how we did it:
Much like a digital version of what Boyo Jim said, we ran everything through an Eventide digital delay set at 7 seconds (don’t remember the particular model number, but it wasn’t anything to fancy.) Sitting in the booth, I’d listen to the live feed, but we’d be broadcasting the delayed feed. If a guest used a verboten word, I’d push a button which would switch me to the delayed feed. As long as I held the first button, I’d be listening to the delayed feed. When I heard the word about to come up, I’d push a second button which would “bleep” it out. (we used a 500Hz tone as our bleep tone) When I let go of the first button, I’d be back listening to the live feed. There was no issue with buffering, as the broadcast feed remained constant. Kinda low tech, but got the job done.